Today comments: 55

Ina's shrimp salad with some pasta, and a pretty little kitty catching some Zs. That's all. Nothing much. (And a whole lot, really. Favorite kind of day.)

comments: 49

One project (Quill) is on the needles, one project (Alpine Frost) is on the hook. Both are perfectly suited to my mood lately. I alternate between them. I need 97 ridges of garter on the Quill and am somewhere in the 60s; then I can start the first lace border. The pattern for the Alpine Frost just goes on and on, and I don't know why it doesn't bore me, but it doesn't. Mine will be big, like a shawl. I gave myself permission to sputter a little bit this week. I sputtered on over to the couch. I sat and crocheted and watched tennis on Sunday morning for several hours until they finally called a rain delay at the French Open. It was kind of a bummer because it was such a good match (well, I have to admit I was rooting for Djokovic), and I have no idea when they finally broadcast (if they broadcast) the rest of the match after it resumed, but I didn't see it. (Wah.) My TiVo didn't pick it up (even though I asked it nicely; maybe it really was never on). As the least athletic person on the planet, I watch a surprising amount of tennis, and I love it.

We are still in the process of reorganizing the office. I am ready to be done with it and get on with life. We painted it white, which as weird. I don't know if I've ever painted a room white before. What is up with me and white these days??? Weird. I have no idea.

Oh! I forgot to say: We were bubbling with laughter all day yesterday as we read your comments with more kitters dialogue. SO FUNNY. Thank you for making me laugh! Silly animals!!!

I have four rows of nine done on my Irish Chain. Today is cloudy and cool. The light is as flat and gray as it can be. The sky looks like a piece of frosted glass. I'm sitting in front of the open windows with Clover snoozing against my leg. Little cat's perched on the top of the couch above my shoulder, watching the yard. Birds are singing outside everywhere. I like all these animals so much. It smells cool and woodsy out there. Big drops of water on the leathery camellia leaves. Earl Grey and cinnamon toast. Shrimp salad with the dill from the garden for dinner. The sound of tires going by on the wet pavement. I can't wait for Andy to get home.

First Harvest! comments: 76

Spinach! And lettuce! From seeds! Proud.

I am way overidentified emotionally with my garden and will need years and years of therapy when it fails but until then I am taking every single victory as personally as I possibly can.

If you look at the pet pictures again I think you can see exactly how the kitterses seat exchange went down. The Bee's like, "Oh, actually yeah, I think I'd like to sit right there. Kthx. 'K, take my picture." All I know is that I was taking a picture of Violet and then the next thing I knew I was taking a picture of Bridget. And I didn't even have to refocus.

(Clover's face is so funny.)

They're all pretty cute. They love to be out in front with me when I'm messing around with m veggies. We have a few teensy green tomatoes, an eggplant flower, many pea flowers, four great big potato plants (and I'm supposed to put soil on their stems or something? Probably too late), and the cucumbers and squash look like they're starting to wake up a bit. I sowed more lettuce and spinach seeds a week or two ago, and they're starting to come up. Yeah, I'm pretty psyched.

We have another nice sunny day around here. That makes two in a row! Wow.

And another one. comments: 46

When things get hectic, the first thing to go is cooking. I guess the last thing to go are the crafts. Andy's office was the one room in our house that really hadn't been touched in about ten years. It had become a sort of repository for cast-offs and Posie overflow. This week it was completely taken apart and repainted (white). A wall of pretty grayish-brown cabinets/shelves and a desk will go in there soon. Behind the glass doors of the cabinets I'll move fabric and yarn. I expect I will need some sort of baskets or something or it will just fall all over the place, but if I can do it right I think it will look so pretty.

As the room gets put back together, it seems like my stress level is coming down. Yesterday I swept up piles and piles of leaves and dirt and pet hair from all over the house, changed all the flower vases, watered all the plants, put away huge stacks of books that had collected next to the side of the bed and in the nook, scrubbed the kitchen, sorted the mail, got my car fixed, dusted. Simple stuff that I normally do that I hadn't been doing. Funny how it piles up and makes me feel like something's wrong but I don't know what. When I feel that way apparently I should just go get the broom and dustpan.

That white thingy up there? It's an Alpine Frost scarf-in-progress made out of lace-weight Malabrigo. When I put it on my neck it feels like a cloud. It's crocheted with the smallest hook I own (3.25mm). I've been wanting to make this scarf forever and I'm finally doing it. The weather's (sadly, maybe) right for it, too. I think when the scarf is blocked it will look more like lace. I'm going to do probably a picot border on it, too, the way several people have done on Ravelry (this one's particularly gorgeous). Having a little neckwear obsession lately.

Thank you for the nice words about my new quilt. I didn't work on it at all yesterday but I will put some photos together to show you what I mean about how I put the squares together. It actually comes together pretty fast. It's the ironing that takes a LOT of time. I wanted something that felt really airy and simple but still kind of . . . delicate. I think this is the first truly traditional quilt I have ever made. It's called a Triple Irish Chain and I kind of used this (the checkerboard version) as an inspiration, but I didn't have a pattern so I just kind of worked my strippy concept out on the fly. The finished patches are 1 1/2" square. It's definitely the tiniest-squared largest quilt I've ever made. Not sure yet how I will quilt it?

(***For those who have asked, my basket is from the Mirador. Andy's birthday cake recipe from last week is here, and the lasagna recipe is here. Unfortunately I don't know the names of any of my roses or peonies. Sorry!)

I don't get it either. comments: 82

No, it's not exactly the first time that, in the midst of general reorganizational chaos and general way-too-much-going-on, I've found it impossible not to stop everything else and (yeah) make a quilt.

A Serenity Now quilt? Well, okay.

Except for the tiny squares of fabric falling all over the floor.

(Thankfully, no, each little square isn't sewn individually [though some are]; long strips of fabric are sewn together, alternating the cream with the colors, then chopped into 2" strips, then resewn into checkerboards. More on this later.)

I also have 97 ridges of garter stitch in fingering weight wool in progress for the center section of my Quill. I think I'm about 1/3 there. Garter stitch in the midst of chaos while watching reality TV? See, like, that I get.

New Systems comments: 81

It feels like we're in the middle of a winter twilight this morning. In the yard the air smells like the rainy woods. It's been raining on and off for days, and the light is so dim all I can see in my house are the bright spots of windows. My neighbor's black and white kitters watches me from her back porch every morning as I make my coffee in our kitchen. It occurs to me that I could head back upstairs and climb back under the covers with Andy and Clover (Clover, who is sitting under the quilt that Andy made for himself! Guest post?). But I've got so much going on downstairs these days that it has been making me anxious, and I know I'd better begin my week. Today, we're going to continue cleaning out and painting Andy's office, which is half-filled with Posie stuff: probably two dozen bolts of wool felt, shipping boxes, embroidery supplies, kits, yarn, fabric. Craft stuff takes up so much space. We don't have that much space. Well, it's more like we need to use our space efficiently, and the poor office has been neglected. Nanny Katie and Eileen Beatrix, my trusty assistants, have both gone on to find full-time jobs; I am very happy for them, though we all miss them around here. Their friend Greta has come to help, and she is amazing, and is getting me all whipped into shape. We tore my studio apart a few weeks ago and put it back together piece by piece, in a much more organized way. Andy's office is still in turmoil, but we're getting there. Greta will be completely taking over the assembly of past-years' ornament kits, and is in the process of counting every skein of embroidery floss and every cut piece of felt we have left over in preparation. I'm thrilled to have the help, nervous about how it will all go, but also filled with new ideas as a result.

It's a funny little business, this little business. It requires you to be both artistically creative but also mired in the details — of pattern writing, of order filling, of supply ordering, of financial balancing, of kit assembling, of proofreading, of space managing, of web site programming. Most of this stuff never makes it to the blog, though in real life I can talk my head off about it (usually to Andy) and it takes up the bulk of my working time. I am a fairly organized person but my systems are seriously archaic, and lately I have been having trouble managing the systems while making time to work on new things. This summer that's changing: newly organized storage spaces, new filing system, new web site (I do my own so it's seriously flawed and jerry-rigged), new shipping module (THANK GOODNESS), new shopping cart (OH THANK GOODNESS), new things (photo prints), awesome new assistant to take over some of the old things, new supplies, and eventually new ideas. It will get worse before it gets better, but I really think it's going to get so much better, and it will free up my time to design more. And that is what I really want to do.

Against the backdrop of all this chaos: My Mrs. Delany–inspired cross-stitch sampler on black was finished and framed and pleased me beyond words. Should you care to view it at a larger size, click on the image and a bigger view onto its buzzing little world will open. I call it my Summersprigs sampler and I think it came out right cool, if I do say. I'm working on the pattern/chart for this, but in the chaos of our reorganization I won't be doing a kit for it at this time. I want to, but I think it will be too much for us to manage right now. Since this is a summer-themed project, I want you to at least have the pattern in this sumer, and that will be finished in a couple of weeks. I'll point you toward sources for materials and will eventually have them available a la cart myself when the new web site is finished. My goal is to be able to carry the supplies — at least, the special supplies — that anyone would need to make most of my patterns.

Slowly but surely, I think I'll get there. I usually do. Right now I feel like there are six or seven things going on all at the same time, and I'd like to whittle that list down these next few weeks, as I am not a natural multi-tasker. I am a natural single-tasker. And you know what offce reorganization means: IKEA TRIP!!! My happy place. I really wish that specific Ikea-cinnamon-roll smell stayed permanently embedded in the furniture. Nothing makes me happier than to open that cardboard box of boards that will become shelves at home and have that wave of cinnamony scent remind me of my happy moments sitting in fake Ikea living rooms (and, I guess, also the time I blew a fuse and put myself in time-out in the Poang chair, which was also in its own, weird, semi-conscious way pretty damn nice). They should sell Ikea-scented candles for meditation.

Garden Grows comments: 112

I have been enjoying our little veggie patch so very much lately. I love being out there. I put my little garden bench in between the beds, put my feet up on the boards, and contemplate much. So far the slugs have been held at bay, thanks, I guess, to Sluggo and crumbled eggshells around the most heavily damaged beets. Everything is in the ground now, and I've planted a new round of spinach and lettuce in between other, slower growing things like the butternut squash and potatoes (though now that those have come up they are growing like crazy, so hopefully there will be enough sun for the lettuce planted around them). Some things, like the cucumbers and squash, look stunted; they seem happy enough, but they haven't gotten much bigger at all. My cabbage definitely has tiny holes, most likely from cabbage worms, though I haven't seen them or any evidence of them other than the holes; I may do something about it if they get worse.

People in the neighborhood have asked me why I put the little rock circles around certain plants. I put them there because I was too lazy to go up and get the wheelbarrow to collect the rocks after we used them to hold down those little paper tents a few weeks ago. I think they are expecting a different answer, but no, just lazy old me. They probably do offer a little bit of warmth and protection after all, maybe?

We planted ten more foxgloves this last week. They are one of my favorite flowers but they don't seem to ever reseed themselves for me. Apparently I have trouble with the whole "biennial" concept. Some of mine come up as rosettes of leaves with no flowers year after year. Or what seems like the one exact same plant flowers year after year. Could that be? I feel like I've been trying to grow them for ten years now and and am no wiser to their fairyland ways.

Woodland Birthday comments: 114

Oh, sweetest of summer afternoons!

After-Dinner Storm comments: 141

A little dinner party on Saturday night with our dear old college friend Kurt and his darling wife, Sheena, who were in town briefly from San Fran. For coffee and banana cake, we went outside to the chairs. Within a half an hour, the sky turned from beautiful, bright sunset gold to pewter gray, flat and lavender-ish. Kurt is a fellow Midwesterner — this looks like tornado weather, we all said. Within minutes, big drops started to fall. The boys ran around putting all of the pillows and hammock blankets away. A hole in the sky continued to shine a spotlight on our little pale green apple tree (just to the left of the hammock). Within a few more minutes it was pouring. Rain, thunder and lightning — the whole works. It was so thrilling. We sat in the doorway of the kitchen and watched it. We headed to the living room and lit a bunch of candles and opened all the casement windows. It was awesome. And so rare — it really almost never rains like that here. Very good end to a dinner party!

Thank you for all of your incredibly kind comments on my peony story. They made me feel really happy — thank you.

*** Today is my sweetest love's birthday: Andy Paulson turns 41! ***

Peonies comments: 293

When I was a little girl there was a lady on our block named Mrs. Schleeter. (I have no idea how to spell her name, but that's what it sounded like.) She lived across the street from us and one house down. Her house was like a little brick cabin; it was very different from the other houses on the street. For one thing, it was small and only one story. It had a large side yard, and a winding path down to the sidewalk. The forested train embankment rose up behind the little house, the way it did for all of the houses on that side of the street. Mrs. Schleeter was old. Long black calico skirts and aprons, long white hair pulled into a bun, a men's plaid wool coat in the winter, men's boots, a cane in a bony hand. I remember my father telling me once that she had told him (possibly in the only conversation they had in the twenty-five years my parents lived there) that she and her husband had bought the house many decades before, when the street was still sparsely populated with houses, because her husband (who was long passed) worked for the railroad, and she liked the railroad. My dad liked the railroad, too, and so did I. Soo Line freight trains rode those rails above our street several times a day and through the night. It's still a sound that I love, and a sound that feels, along with the coo-coo-coo of the mourning dove, just like home.

I think my dad liked her and respected her. Mrs. Schleeter was not a friendly lady, and I think he liked that too. She didn't socialize with anyone on the street. She never said hello, never waved. If she was outside and other people came out, she would go in. We were told to give her her space, and leave her property alone, because that was what she wanted. Weeks would go by without a glimpse. There were probably twenty kids on our block. I think I can count twenty. We lived on a cul-de-sac, and we kids had free reign over the wide, quiet two blocks that made up our world. Oak trees towered from either side like flying buttresses and formed a vaulted ceiling of green. The houses were large and old and pretty but weathered; people lived here for a long time. Lilies of the valley, hosta flowers, rusty wire fences, long grass. The only cars we ever saw there were owned by our various parents and we knew each of them; if a strange car came down our street we all stopped at stared at it, wary, until it moved on. We knew everyone and everyone knew us. I had been in almost every house on my street (except Mrs. Schleeter's), and if I hadn't been in the house I knew the people who lived there.

There was a school yard at one end of the street, down near our house, and that was our school. The other end of the block butted up against the elevated Metra train tracks, which went downtown to Chicago (another world), and that end of the street had a slightly more refined, more cosmopolitan air. Our end was the woolier end. We were wild kids then — the minute we finished dinner we were outside until dark. It was the '70s, and, as everyone will tell you, things were different. No one watched us. We knew to come home when the street lights went on. If we were late, my dad would come out onto the front porch and call for us. That was not preferred; he would not be happy if he had to do that. We almost always came in before we were called. If one person got called in, the whole group would disband. Fireflies lit the humid air. Every seven years the sound of cicadas sizzled, constant and frenzied. We had many societies, most of which were focused on fighting with each other, competing with each other, or generally doing things we weren't supposed to: going up into someone's crumbling attic, sitting on the roof of the Miller's garage (their parents were divorced, and their mother was never home) with a pack of cigarettes, climbing over the fence to the railroad embankment behind the school yard and throwing rocks at stuff. Every summer there was a new, very competitive game: Kick the Can, Running Bases, Rummy 500. Fall was miserable, as it was always Acorn Wars. There were tears, tattling, and bruises during Acorn Wars. We spent the time after school collecting hundreds of little nuts in dozens of coffee cans that we'd hide from each other (it was usually boys against girls, which got complicated if you had brothers, which I didn't), and then after dinner we'd race back outside, excavate our cans, and whip acorns at each other for hours, until someone went home crying and someone got in trouble. I hated Acorn Wars, was pummelled mercilessly, and was usually one of the ones who went home crying.

Mrs. Schleeter's house was in the middle of all of this. But we never walked on her lawn, never congregated on her sidewalk, never played Ghost in the Graveyard on her part of the street. There were rumors that she shot squirrels and ate them. There were rumors that she had kidnapped kids, or at least had yelled at them which, as someone who was scared of getting yelled at, I thought was almost as bad. In spite of the fact that I had once wiped out on the sidewalk in front of her house (it was winter but there was no snow, I was getting over a cold and my legs were wobbly, I was running past her house and faced-planted in front of it, resulting in a long scrape and subsequent string of scabs running from my forehead to the tip of my nose to the space above my upper lip [scab mustache] to my chin for the Christmas picture — see, I shouldn't have been near her house!), I had secretly always liked it. I thought it would've been perfect for me. My own cabin. Rust-colored brick. A little tremble of smoke constantly coming from the little chimney. A big front window made up of rectangular panes, the skinny trim of all of those panes painted black. Crooked, ancient-looking apple trees in the side yard. A raucous, old-lady's vegetable garden out back (rhubarb, rutabaga, cabbages, turnips?). The edge of the weedy driveway was lined with two dozen blousy, blustering peony bushes, white, light pink, and dark burgundy wine. She, and it all, seemed like they had been there for a hundred years. A fairy tale crone-cottage on Forest Avenue. I liked it, and looked at it a lot.

In early summer, on only one night (one very special night that I think now she probably waited for all year), she came slowly out of her house. She would wait until we kids were somewhere close, learning the Bus Stop in the Papienski's yard or playing volleyball in front of mine, and she beckoned to the closest one of us. "Come here." The child would drop the ball, and, walk, looking back nervously, across the street. "Come here" — a crooked finger gesturing toward the rest of us; a small herd of small sheep, we'd walk as a unit toward her house and our nervous friend. It was very quiet. She didn't speak. She had several pairs of big black scissors in her big patch pockets. She handed them to the oldest kids among us. Our little sisters and little brothers were close on our heels, wide-eyed. She walked to the long row of peonies and we'd follow. There must have been of a hundred enormous flowers, perfectly in bloom or bud. One by one, she'd point to exactly where she wanted the stem cut — that one, there. That one, there. This one, there. One flower, and one child, at a time. The stems were thick and crunched when you cut them. The scissors were metal, dull black, huge and oiled. The peonies were heavy and twitchy with ants. Blossom by blossom, kid by kid, she directed each cut until our arms were filled with flowers, and our little hands could hold no more. Those great bushels put my wedding flowers to shame. When she was finished, she collected the scissors and moved, in her long skirts, back off toward her house like a ship, until next summer. Chagrined, thrilled, still slightly terrified, we whispered our hoarse, peony-scented thank-yous and skittered away to bring the bouquets home to our mothers. Our mothers would say, "Did you say thank you?" and we'd nod, still nervous. I remember that my mom would put the bouquet in the middle of the dining room table. I'll have to ask her if she remembers. Along with fragrant handfuls of square-stemmed lily of the valley from next to the front stairs and billowing clouds of lilacs from under the dining room windows, peonies are the only cut flower I remember us having in the house, and only Mrs. Schleeter's, and only for that one week.

We have ten pink peony bushes, all coming into bloom just now. None of them seem like the right varieties to me, though when I bought them (as dried up little roots, in a box) ten years ago I was trying to get the same ones Mrs. Schleeter had. The smell of the bouquets in the house takes me right back. When I was in River Forest this past summer I saw that Mrs. Schleeter's house had been seriously remodeled, the yard tamed, the peonies gone. If I see some big black shears at an estate sale, I'll get them.